Chapter 9:
As usual it was snowing, cold drafts blew through the buildings surrounding the rail yard, swirling around the vehicles and personnel there. The temperature was hanging in the low twenties, and threatening to go lower. Gloved hands fumbled with cables and chains, clumsy and awkward, trying to avoid any skin touching the frigid metal. To touch was to bond, getting free would mean leaving an offering of flesh to the cold gods, and cuts healed slowly in the cold and dirt of the field. No one wants to start a field problem with a pre existing disadvantage. Though to be truthful, just being a Scout was a disadvantage most times.
Shivering in our parkas, our hands and feet numb, ears burning as if on fire, we waited our turn to load, and it usually proved to be a long wait. It takes a lot of time to load out a battalion of armored vehicles, what with five line companies and the headquarters company which was larger than two line companies. It is a long process that cannot be safely hurried; driving a thirteen-ton vehicle onto and down a long line of railcars is a delicate process fraught with danger. The width of the rail cars exceeded the width of the vehicles by only scant inches, and each turn had to be made with surgical precision, or disaster would strike. Due to the weight of the vehicles, only one at a time could be moving on any given rail car at the time. Our rail loading facility left much to be desired anyway, we had to drive the full length of the train and slowly fill it up from the rear. Often there would be twenty cars in each train, and it would take almost a half hour to move one vehicle to the front of the train.
Once you reached your designated spot on the car, you would begin the long and aggravating process of tying it down. Chock blocks made from good solid German oak had to be spiked down to the deck, and then you rolled up on them and sat holding the brakes while your crew nailed down more of the same in the back. Then you rolled back into them and wedged your vehicle between them. At this point if you were lucky, you had chain binders, and could quickly cross them on the front and back and hook up to the car. Chains were both highly desired, and often stolen from company to company and battalion to battalion. Many a fistfight took place in the dark motor pools of the kaserne and in the field areas over chains. I almost believe there were more fights over chains than women, especially prior to a rail load.
If you were not among the fortunate few who possessed chains, you had to deal with large, stiff, and unwieldy cables and turnbuckles. These had to be unclamped and adjusted to fit every time you rail loaded, never in countless rail loads, did I see anyone using cables that didn’t have to adjust them to fit. To make this even worse, the bolt ends of the clamps were always damaged by the banging and beating around, and would have to be filed down to allow you to remove the nuts. Swearing and cussing, you would get them loose; connect them to the rail car and your vehicle, and finally tightened. At which point you sought out your platoon sergeant and informed him you were ready for inspection. Nine times out of ten, this would result in you being assigned to assist another crew with their vehicle, but it wasn’t really any worse than having to stand around waiting for your vehicle to be inspected, at least you kept moving and didn’t freeze quite as fast.
After what seemed to be hours, your friendly Bundesbahn inspector, sipping a cup of coffee, would amble by, look briefly at the tie downs, and announce they were too loose. No matter that you could play a tune on them, no matter that they were threatening to pull the eyes out of your hull, they would have to be tightened again. We bitched about it constantly, but in truth, no matter how tight you got them, when you arrived at Grafenwohr or Hohenfels, or where ever you had been sent, they would be loose and floppy. The constant surging and swaying would work them loose no matter how tight. We would jump back up on the train and strain and pull until we met his standards, then, if lucky head for the barracks or the PX to warm up. Somehow, the Scouts always seemed to draw the privilege of guarding the trains until they pulled out. We would have gladly given them to anyone foolish enough to want them, but dutifully we walked up and down the length of the train, stomping through the snow, night and day, until at long last, it would roll out the gate and into the darkness.
Phase One was complete, now came a brief week of final prep for the field. Since we had no vehicles to tend, we swept the motor pool, cleaned our spotless weapons, and held classes on every subject imaginable to fill the time. Duty details were drafted from amongst us, to load trucks for the mess hall, load out weapons from the arms room, and any other duty required to outfit and support a large force in the field for a month. Any free moment was given over to scrounging munchies, packing away some item that might make life in the field a little more comfortable. The PX and commissary were ransacked, crackers, canned meats and sausages, any item that could be stashed away in a duffle bag or rucksack quickly disappeared from the shelves. Wives were busy baking and cooking, with detailed instructions on mailing care packages for their husbands. Some of us even made our own packages, and waited till the last moment to mail them to ourselves. This required careful timing to avoid the package arriving at the barracks before the company mail room left for the field. Carefully did one pack their boxes, making sure that nothing leaked, that nothing breakable, say like a bottle of Asbach, or bourbon, could be broken in handling, not that any of us would dream of packing such items. Care packages were the shiny spot in the darkness of the field, bringing a small measure of comfort to a decidedly uncomfortable situation, but they were sadly subject to much plundering. More than once, you would get your package only to find someone had pilfered it in transit. Mail clerks were the usually suspects, and often the culprit as well, but others in the chain were guilty as well. It was always a sore point among us that those in the field trains, who had a life of relative comfort compared to us, would steal from us. We could only take what we could carry or stash in our vehicles, and with the amount of gear and weaponry we carried on them, there was little room for anything else, while they had trucks and trailers capable of carrying any amount they could afford.
Finally, the day arrived when we would climb aboard the trains ourselves, and begin the long ride to the training area, packed into old and musty passenger cars, long unused by the Bundesbahn for paying customers. If we were lucky, we would get sleeper cars, but more than once, we rode for days on day coaches, with hard wooden benches. The heat on these vehicles, as a rule only worked when they were rolling, and you would freeze while you sat for hours on a sidetrack. If you were so fortunate to rate a sleeper car, you could bundle up with a poncho liner and field jacket and sleep for hours at a time, lulled by the rocking, swaying motion of the train. But even a day car was better than having to ride in the back of a deuce and a half truck down the autobahn at 45 miles an hour. It wasn’t great, but it was as a rule, the best way to get to the field.
One fly in the ointment was the latrine facilities on the car, for while they had sit down toilets, the restrooms were not heated. Nothing can quiet compare to plopping your butt down on a frigid metal toilet seat in the dead of winter, it does lend speed to the act of relieving ones self.
And the toilet paper provided? I still believe it was made from recycled cardboard, for it was stiff and rough, gray in color, and closely resembled 80 grit sandpaper. I often voiced the opinion that it was the reason most Germans seemed to be constantly gruff and irritable. It was most likely the reason so few commuters had hemorrhoid problems, as it kept them filed down. We referred to it in the same manner as the paper that came with the combat rations, John Wayne paper, for it was rough, tough, and took no shit off anybody.
If you could survive the latrines, the wooden benches, and being cooped up with 2 to 3 hundred other people, it wasn’t bad. There was of course, much entertainment to be had on the trains, from card games, bull sessions, arm wrestling, and pitching quarters. The ride may have been long, but compared to what awaited us on the other end, it wasn’t long enough. All too soon, we would arrive and be quickly herded outside into the cold to off load our vehicles. No matter what time you departed, how long the ride, how many hours you sat on a cold rail siding, you always arrived to off load in the middle of a cold night, greeted by a pissed off First Sergeant or Sergeant Major, bent on having “his damn train” off loaded “right damn now.”
We would stagger off the train, into the stinging snow and sleet, which drove into your face like ice needles, fumbling with our weapons, rucksack, and field gear, along with any other items we had, and stumble-run to the frozen train.
Depending on the humor of the train crews, you might find the train backed into the rail yard so that you had to “back” your vehicle off, which added another large element of danger and anxiety to the process. In the darkness, lit only by weak flashlight beams, you would struggle with the bindings, the driver would be making his way up top to open the hatch and attempt to start the engine. The locks on the hatch would be of course frozen, requiring you to either hold it in your ungloved hand, or try to warm it with a lighter in the blowing wind. One driver in our platoon, in a moment of supreme stupidity, decided to thaw the locks by urinating on them, and spent the rest of the field problem with a frozen yellow slick covering his hatch and surrounding hull.
When the hatch was finally opened, it was a fifty-fifty chance that it would start, as the batteries were often weak from the cold. If it wouldn’t start, you had to dig through all the equipment in the back to find the slave cables, and work your way across the top of your vehicle to the next to get a jump. A true act of bravery given the wind, ice, and darkness, as you scrambled across the shovels, axes and cables lashed to the top of the vehicles.
Once we’d managed to wrestle the beast into life, we could roll up on the blocks and start prying them from the frozen deck, which took great effort if they’d gotten wet at anytime. When we finally free’d the damn thing, we would sit and wait until we had a clear path, and begin to slowly guide it off. Slowly and painfully you’d reach the end of the car, and roll off onto the ramp, thanking the gods that be that you’d managed to land again safely.
Then you’d gather your tie-downs and stow them about the vehicles, in the case of chains, you’d padlock them with as many locks as possible, or, if you were smart, lock them up inside and cover them with any spare gear. Thus finally you could roll out to the assembly area for the road march to your home for the next month or so.
Usually the motor pool was a expanse of mud surrounded by concertina wire and flagging tape, as distant from the tent area as possible, to ensure you got a good work out carrying your crew served weapons to the arms room. Straining and slipping, with a icy cold 50 caliber machine gun digging into your neck, you made your way to arms room line, again to sit and wait.
Much, much later, you would finally get to lie down for a moment or two before reveille and the start of a new adventure.
